Thinking big
Robin Oakley
Watching the woman in front of me in the Ascot Tote queue backing five horses in the same race on Saturday reminded me of Lloyd Bentsen, one of the best US politicians never to become president, who died last week. Asked once if it wasn’t rather unfair running simultaneously for vice-president and for a Senate seat, he said he had modelled his political career on a vet and a taxidermist in his home town. The pair had set up shop next to each other in the main square, erecting a board which ran across the top of both premises, proclaiming: ‘Either way you get your dog back.’ I don’t know if Bentsen, a rich Texan famous for his classic ‘I knew Jack Kennedy’ put-down of presidential aspirant Dan Quayle, was a racehorse owner but he would have done well in the Coolmore or Godolphin set-ups. He once declared of the soaring budgets under Ronald Reagan, ‘A billion here and a billion there and pretty soon you’re talking real money.’ One man who seemed to be thriving at Ascot, despite spending a cool £200 million on rebuilding the stands and relaying the track, was the affable chief executive Douglas Erskine-Crum. The elements were not kind. It rained all day. A royal victory was denied when the Queen’s Marching Song was second in the Victoria Cup, and it took until the last race for Frankie Dettori, the Ascot mascot, to win a race and delight the crowd with his trademark ‘flying dismount’. There were snags: queues for the ladies loos, complaints about course visibility at lower levels, potential bottlenecks. Those booking seats in the sixth-floor panoramic restaurant will have to be precise with their table requests if they are to glimpse any panorama.
But the damp yet beaming Douglas, without brolly or raincoat (‘It was 20 months since we’d raced and I couldn’t find it’), expressed himself delighted with the dress-rehearsal less than a month before Royal Ascot. Well he might. We have some first-rate, well-managed racecourses in Britain: Sandown, Cheltenham, York, Newbury. But what we now have is a truly world-class track.
You can, if you choose, compare the massive new 370-metre grandstand with its soaring atrium and vaulted roof to an airport terminal or a shopping mall. But from the upper floors, at least, the race viewing is fantastic. No longer do you have to thrust your head under somebody else’s armpit to get a glimpse of the horses in the parade ring — there is a clear view for at least 8,000. And if you have socialised too late to get into the stands for a race there is a brilliant big screen on the paddock side where you can see all the action and (other courses please take note) hear the commentary as clear as a bell.
More importantly, the course itself is superb. Martin Dwyer said it was the best track he had ridden on. Ryan Moore said that despite the soaking it had received the course was riding like a carpet. Frankie Dettori, who does not do understatement, called the course ‘magnificent’, adding that the rebuilding with banking on the turn had stiffened things up between five and three furlongs out. ‘We’ll have to adjust to that,’ he said, ‘but don’t tell the others.’ Most jockeys agreed, though, that the straight mile, which has been entirely relaid with a new soil mix beneath, seems to be better drained than the other parts of the track and that it was therefore riding firmer. You may need versatile horses at Ascot in future, able to cope with more than one kind of going during the longer races.
Of course, there were some grumbles. I was assailed by an uncharacteristically grumpy Roger Charlton, who I think had taken me for an Ascot official, demanding to know a better route to the weighingroom. Philip Mitchell reckoned the stands were a bit too close to the new track. But the only reason for the absence of his normal smile turned out to be that fellow trainer Brian Meehan had walked off with his umbrella. And the only complaint from Paul Blockley, who had the distinction of training the first winner on the reopened racecourse with Baby Strange, was that he couldn’t find the Owners and Trainers Bar.
Of course, there will be more teething troubles when an 80,000 crowd assembles for Royal Ascot. The 650 private boxes were not even tried last Saturday. But Ascot has thought big and played big. And it has made it, just about, on time. Wembley, eat your heart out.
My only hope is that when I am next on the Berkshire track I do not meet the Irish source who assured me that Jim Bolger’s Heliostatic had been absolutely flying at home and could not possibly finish out of the first three in the Irish 2,000 Guineas. Convinced that George Washington was a ridiculous price on such heavy ground, I plunged heavily, only to watch Heliostatic finish sixth of 11. As for this Saturday’s Derby, there is much expectation that, with the Aga Khan’s Visindar or Sean Mulryan’s Linda’s Lad, Andre Fabre will end a French hoodoo in the race that has lasted 30 years. The problem with the favourite is that Visindar has never really had to battle in a race yet. My not very bold advice is to go with whichever of Aidan O’Brien’s four entries Kieren Fallon chooses to partner. And after seeing him last week galloping on the soaking Epsom turf, I think the each-way value may lie with Mark Johnston’s Atlantic Waves. Yes, you do need speed to win a Derby. But you also need to stay, and he will. As for Friday’s Oaks, Sir Michael Stoute is in formidable form and the Newmarket scouts report that his Short Skirt was truly impressive in a recent gallop with Scottish Stage.
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